The Christmas Recap

(Could she get any happier or a cheesier grin!?)

We had such a great Christmas this year, kids make it so much fun! We started off the festivities with family parties on my side of the family both the Sunday before Christmas and then Christmas Eve night. Alexis was able to participate in both of those nativities as an angel, and also performed for the Anderson party in the program. Jonathan was supposed to play the ukulele while Alexis sang "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" but at the last minute Alexis decided she wanted all of the attention and played the ukulele herself while singing. What a little performer she is!


On Christmas Eve morning we went up to Jonathan's mom's house and ate breakfast with the Jensen's and opened presents. Grandma Cookie always gives all of the kids pajamas and Alexis was thrilled that both she & Afton received matching Princess pajamas.


We then spent Christmas Eve night at my parent's home in Pleasant Grove. Alexis was so excited to be having a sleepover at Grandma's and Aunt Jordan spent the night as well. Being the demanding child the Alexis is she asked my dad if it would be alright if she slept with Grandma in her bed and Grandpa slept downstairs in Taylor's bed. And then of course being the spoiled grandchild that she is my dad gave in and was kicked downstairs to sleep!

(Jonathan & Alexis sprinkled reindeer food outside for Santa's reindeers)

(Christmas Eve night, doesn't she look excited!? She's thinking, "Big deal!")

Alexis woke up a little before 7:00 and the day began! Santa was very good to Alexis and she basically enjoyed a "Princess Christmas". Elle was the lucky one and slept in until 9:00 so Alexis then got to help with Round 2 of opening up all of Elle's presents. We spent Christmas Day at my parents house and then successfully loaded up the car with all of the fun new things and headed home to hopefully find room for all of the new things in our house!

(Christmas morning, she's wondering what all of the excitement is about! Isn't that the funniest look!?)

(But then she saw the toys that Santa brought!)

Has this happened to anyone else?

Last Saturday Alexis was so excited to go outside and play in the snow. I got her all dressed up and she lasted about 10 minutes out there (she is just like her parents and doesn't like the cold). When she came in I took her coat, gloves and hat and threw them into the dryer to dry and warm them up. When I opened the dryer about 20 minutes later I quickly closed the door and screamed, "I just don't want to look!" Jonathan came running in wondering what was wrong and opened the dryer door, there was melted crayons all over! Alexis had about 5 crayons in her coat pocket that just melted everywhere!

Unfortunately we then had to make a mad dash to the store to buy some WD-40 and then spent the rest of the morning scrubbing the inside of the dryer out. I didn't get a before picture of Alexis' coat, but I was able to treat it and get a bunch of the crayon cleaned up off of that, thank goodness! Her coat was new and fairly expensive so she now just gets to run around with a "coat of many colors"!

So the moral of my story is don't allow your children to play with crayons! I'm just kidding, just make sure that they don't make a habit out of carrying them around in their pockets!

Happy Holidays!

We just wanted to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! We hope that you all have a great holiday season!

(A huge shout out to Amy Creer for designing these great Christmas/Birth announcements, isn't she amazing!?)

Santa Claus!!

We took Alexis & Elle to the mall yesterday to visit Santa and Alexis was so excited! She loves Santa and was ready to tell him exactly what she wants for Christmas, Guitar Hero. I know, you are all asking, "what 3 year old little girl wants Guitar Hero!?" But my little girl does want Guitar Hero World Tour because she loves to play the drums and is excited to play some rock 'n roll with her Dad.

I was so happy that we were able to get a picture of both girls with Santa and they both managed to be smiling and liking it! We are very excited for Christmas this year and have really enjoyed all of the fun Christmas activities and traditions we are starting with our little family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving with the Jensen family! It was held at Jonathan's brother's house (Kib) and we had all of the Jensen's there except for 2 families who were off on vacation! Alexis loves her cousins and they are so good to her, I seriously did not see her the whole day except for the 5 minutes she sat at the table and indulged us by eating 3 bites of potatoes before she was off to play again!
After dinner we decided to go and see a movie. Everyone went except a few of my nephews who stayed behind and watched the 3 toddlers for us! It was so fun to get out of the house and see a movie with Jonathan's family and not worry about Alexis. Elle came with and was such a good girl, she slept through the entire thing in my sister-in-law's arms!

We are working on getting Christmas set up at our house today and are looking forward to this holiday season! Alexis is at such a fun age and I love to see her so happy & excited about it all!

Picture Catchup

I have thought about blogging numerous times the past week and I just never seem to get around to it, so now I am going to catchup by posting just a bunch of pictures of my cute girls!

Elle is now smiling and we LOVE it, she has been so much fun and I love to see her little personality starting to show. Alexis is an amazing big sister and helps me keep Elle happy. I seriously can't say enough great things about how she has helped and adjusted to her new sister.

(This is usually how we start our morning out, I love this time of the day!)

(Isn't she such a good big sister!?)

We had a good time watching the BYU/Utah game last weekend over at my parents house. After the game Gavin, Mandy and kids came over to play! Afton & Alexis had the same pajamas so we had to get a picture and Luke & Elle didn't want to be left out! Cute kids, huh!?

(Alexis, Luke, Elle, & Afton)
Do you think any of them look alike?

(Afton loves babies! Elle even had a smile for her!)

Elle's First Utah Jazz game!

We took Elle to her first Utah Jazz game on Wednesday night and as you can tell by the picture she could hardly contain her excitement! We love going to Jazz games so we decided to introduce them to Elle at an early age. She fell asleep while we were at dinner and continued to sleep during the national anthem, introduction of the starting lineup, 1st & 2nd quarter, the high school marching band half time show, 3rd and 4th quarter, and the walk back to the car! We were so impressed! Now if I can only teach her to sleep through the night and take her naps at home we'll be set!

Sick Kids

(Day 1)

(Day 3)

We have had one long weekend and week shut up in our house with sick kids! Unfortunately starting Sunday morning Alexis and Elle caught some stomach bug and starting then my life consisted of running Alexis to the bathroom and then running to pick up screaming Elle and then running Alexis back the bathroom and running back to pick up screaming Elle. Doesn't that sound pleasant!? Luckily we are back to our normal routine and schedule and I think I have two healthy girls once again. We did enjoy about 3 or 4 days of just hanging out in our pajamas though! Now my fingers are crossed that Jonathan & I escaped the bug!

Happy Halloween!

We had such a great Halloween, Alexis loved every minute of it! We started out the festivities by carving pumpkins on Monday night. We thought that it would be a great family activity, but little did we know that Alexis wouldn't want any part of it. Jonathan gave her the job of scooping out the pumpkin, but right when he cut the top off Alexis smelled the pumpkin and thought that it stunk and that was the end of her pumpkin carving! Jonathan ended carving pumpkins by himself, they turned out great, so thank you Jonathan!

Jill & Darren were here visiting from Seattle until Halloween morning so we got the kids together in their costumes to get some pictures of the grandkids. Alexis was Cinderella, Elle was a pig, Joseph was a firefighter, and Justin was a police officer. I will post more pictures later of all the fun things we did with the Jolley's here in town!


On Halloween we decided to spend it up at my Mom & Dad's. I thought that we would let Alexis go trick or treating to my parent's few neighbors so that she experienced it and then we would go back to their house, but Alexis wanted to just keep going and going. We visited house after house in their neighborhood, and she kept saying, "How about we go to another house!?" Then when we got back she picked out each candy one by one to see what she got, it was so fun to watch her, it made me remember Halloween when I was little!

My mom made yummy chili and breadsticks for dinner and we sat around and watched Alexis open the door for all of the trick or treaters. She took her job very seriously and would stand by the window at the door and just watch for more kids to walk up to the door. She was very disappointed when it started getting late and they stopped coming to the house.

It was such a great Halloween, I love seeing Alexis start to understand it all and be so excited, I'm sure each year will just keep getting better and better.

Elle's Blessing Day

Elle's big blessing day was on Sunday and everything turned out great! Jill & Darren are in town so we decided to bless her while they were here, I'm so happy that it all worked out. We are lucky to have such great family & friends that are so supportive of us and our little family and we were happy to have so many of them there with us on this special day.

Elle is a very squirmy baby so we were nervous that she wouldn't hold still for Jonathan and she loves to be cuddled so I thought that she would cry through the whole thing, but she proved us wrong and was great! And then we had everyone over to our house afterward for some yummy sugar cookies and milk.

I am so lucky to have such a great husband who is a Priesthood holder and can bless our children. I love our little family, we are so blessed to have such beautiful little girls. The day couldn't have gone better. (I do regret not getting better pictures of Elle on her special day. I always seem to forget something!)

25% off Shade Clothing this week only!

As most of you already know I sell for Shade Clothing so I thought that I would post this in case any of you are interested.

If you have wanted to buy anything from Shade Clothing now is the time because starting today until Nov. 2nd you will receive 25% off everything (including sale & marked down items) if you order through me directly or if you use my Personal Shopper Code (JEN30827) online or in the stores.

If you are interested I would place order right away because Shade does expect to sell out of items quickly. If you have any questions or would like to order anything from me you can call me, email or just post a comment and I will contact you.

Shade has their new Fall product available and there are some really cute shirts, dresses, and my personal favorite, their Lounge wear pants and jacket! Check them out! www.shadeclothing.com

Elle's "Dinosaur" fell off

Elle's "dinosaur" fell off a few days ago and Alexis was so excited, she couldn't wait to have her first bath together with Elle, Saturday was the big day. I am so happy that I can now bath her normally because the sponge bathing was a lot more work! Alexis was very disappointed though that Elle couldn't play with any of the toys and that she didn't want to stay in the tub longer. Hopefully this will still be exciting to Alexis when Elle is old enough to sit up and play with the toys.

Alexis loves baby Elle and talks to her often to try and calm her down when she is crying. Yesterday Alexis told me, "I love baby Elle, I'm so happy that she came out of Mommy's tummy." Here are some pictures of Alexis & Elle hanging out in bed this morning, I think that they are going to be such good friends & sisters.

Getting any sleep!?

(This is how we ended up falling asleep early in the morning. Poor Jonathan, no room for you!)

Elle & I are desperately trying to get the sleep that we need. She is doing better at night and at least giving me 3 to 4 hours of sleep at a time. She is a very "high maintenance" sleeper though and requires/demands that you hold her until she is completely asleep before you attempt to put her down. This proofs to be very difficult at times with a 3 year old, cleaning the house, working from home, trying to get any sleep myself and sometimes just my sanity!

She is 3 weeks old today, so I'll give her a few more weeks of pampering before I try and nip the "hold me until I'm asleep" in the butt.

Fun at the Fire Station

Last week we went to the Fire Station in Orem for a fun Open House. They had all sorts of fun activities for the kids to do and fun things to watch and learn. Alexis was able to watch a fire be put out, spray a fire hose, watch a car door being taken off, see the Life Flight helicopter fly in and land, and she & Lincoln's favorite thing was to go through the Smoke Trailer. They had a trailer that they would fill with steam/smoke and the kids would get on their hands and knees and crawl under it and through the trailer. Lincoln and Alexis thought that this was the best thing ever and I think they ended up doing it about 4 or 5 times!

It was a lot of fun for both Alexis & I and such a great way for her to learn about fire safety and experience some of these things. This was our first outing out just me and the 2 girls and I think that we got through it pretty well without any problems, 1 down and many more to go!

Alexis"isms"

Alexis always keeps us laughing with the cute and funny things that she says. I am afraid that I will forget some of these things so I decided to record a few of them here.

When Alexis saw Elle's umbilical cord for the first time she called it a "dinosaur". She thinks that the clamp on the end of it looks like a dinosaur bone so now all of us call it her "dinosaur".

Last night she had to go to the bathroom and while she was in there with Jonathan they started having this conversation.

Jonathan: "Alexis you are such a good girl. Heavenly Father sure blessed us with a good girl"

Alexis: "Jesus too. Daddy, Jesus helped me go potty."

Jonathan: "Wow, that sure was nice of Jesus to help you."

Alexis: "I have an idea. You and Mommy go to a movie and Jesus will come over and play with me."

Jonathan: "That would be fun to have Jesus come over and play, wouldn't it?"

I was in the other room just laughing. I love all of the things she says and to just see her little mind work.

Life at Home

We are home and pretty much back to our lives and schedules. Jonathan went back to work on Monday and I have to admit that I was nervous to start being a mom to 2 kids, but luckily it hasn't been a problem at all. My mom has come during the days to help keep both girls happy and has made us awesome dinners before she heads home, we have really appreciated it.

Isn't she sweet!?

Elle has had her days and nights a little confused so she has been sleeping all day and then only sleeping for an hour or 2 at a time at night. But last night she did amazing and slept for 4 hours at a time. I'm just hoping that it wasn't a one time thing because I could definitely get used to that schedule!


Alexis has been doing very well and has been helpful. The adjustment hasn't been as hard as I was anticipating (at least yet). Every time I say that I realize that I have yet to take the 2 of them out in public and my wardrobe has consisted of pajamas and no makeup, so I guess "real life" hasn't started for us yet!

Elle Joy Jensen

Elle was born today around 11:25 am. She weighed 7lbs 12oz and was 19.5 inches long. The labor and delivery happened very fast and both mother and baby are doing great! (A longer post and more pictures will be posted in the next couple of days.)